Inside Health

U.N. Cites Gains for Women Worldwide, but Health Issues Linger

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

Published: September 1, 2004

Correction Appended

The number of girls in school and women in parliaments has risen, and their overall access to contraception has improved in the past decade, according to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund.

The report cites 23 countries, including Zambia, Bangladesh, Guatemala and Paraguay, as having made especially significant improvements in conditions for women, particularly regarding reproductive health and education.

But there has been little progress in other goals set 10 years ago at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, the report says. The number of women who die during childbirth and pregnancy remains high, the H.I.V. epidemic is exploding among women and children, and too little attention is being paid to preventing adolescent pregnancy and diseases, it states.

The findings were released at a gathering here of nongovernmental organizations to take stock, midway, of the 20-year goals drawn up in Cairo in 1994. The landmark ''Cairo consensus'' shifted the debate over population control away from traditional family planning, involving quotas and targets, to one governed by women's rights and women's health, and laid out an ambitious agenda. In all, 179 countries adopted the plan of action calling for universal access to reproductive health care, and lower infant, child and maternal mortality rates.

''I do believe we have made tremendous progress from Cairo,'' said Jill Sheffield, the president of Family Care International, a group based in New York.

Still, organizers pointed to a number of obstacles they must overcome to bolster the status of women and to save lives, including the strain on resources from the H.I.V. epidemic and resistance from religious fundamentalists.

''I think the glass is distinctly more than half empty,'' said Gita Sen, a visiting professor of population and international health at Harvard University and a longtime women's rights activist. ''Religious conservatism has had an enormous impact.''

President Bush was criticized for his decision to drop United States support for the Cairo agreement over its acceptance of abortion and for cutting financing to international family planning groups that provide information about abortion.

The administration was excoriated for promoting abstinence over the use of condoms, particularly in developing countries ravaged by H.I.V. and AIDS.

''In a reversal of its historic role, my own country has emerged as one of the most significant obstacles to progress,'' said Timothy E. Wirth, a former senator from Colorado who led the American delegation to Cairo in 1994 for the Clinton administration. He is now the president of the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund.

''On issue after issue, the current administration has placed ideology above evidence and bias above science,'' Mr. Wirth said in a speech.

''Isn't it shameful that so many of the men talking about the sanctity of life are, by their actions, ignorance and prejudice, effectively condemning women to die?'' he said.

Correction: September 11, 2004, Saturday
An article on Sept. 1 about a mixed report on the state of women's health around the world misidentified the issuer. The report was produced by three nongovernmental organizations -- Population Action International, Family Care International and the International Planned Parenthood Federation -- not by the United Nations Population Fund.